Fight Your Foes
by liztits
Summary: Snippets of how The Girl with the Axe got under the skin of The Mockingjay. (Set during Mockingjay, rated T because Johanna has a dirty mouth.)
1. The Block

"Johanna's back in the hospital."  
My brow furrows, concerned. I'd thought she'd passed her exam, had been assigned to another squad.  
"Is she hurt? What happened?" A thousand scenarios run through my head. My voice crackles, sounds oddly desperate. Finnick looks at my through the corner of his eye, eyebrow raised in confusion.  
"It was while she was on the Block. They try to ferret out a soldiers' potential weakness. So they flooded the street." Haymitch explains to me like it's obvious, but it doesn't help me. She can swim, I've seen her swim before, in the games. Not like Finnick, no one swims like Finnick, but she was a fair swimmer.  
"So?" I question.  
Haymitch rolls his eyes. "That's how they tortured her in the Capitol, soaked her then used electric shocks." My heart sinks. I should've known, should've seen. Her reaction to the rain, using a cloth to bathe… it was obvious. But I never asked, too consumed in my own problems. "In the Block she had some kind of flashback. Panicked, didn't know where she was. She's back under sedation." I'd thought her misery was because of the morphling withdrawals. I stand frozen, unable to respond. Finnick mirrors me, still as a statue.

"You two should go and see her, you're as close to friends as she's got." Haymitch's eyes flit between us. His words make it worse. I don't know what kind of relationship Johanna and Finnick have, but I realise that I know barely anything about her. I know she's alone, no family or friends. Not even a trinket to sit next to her regulation clothes in her anonymous drawer.  
"I better go and tell Plutarch. He won't be happy." Haymitch continues. "He wants as many victors as possible for the cameras to follow in the Capitol. Thinks it makes for better television."  
"Are you and Beetee going?" He knows I'm trying to prolong our conversation, and I see confusion flash across his face before he answers me.  
"As many young and attractive victors as possible," He corrects himself. "So no, we'll be here." He takes off before I can ask him anything else, and Finnick follows him out.

I stand in the same spot, contemplating. I feel awful, Johanna must know everything about me and I didn't even ask her what had happened in the Capitol. The guilt weighs heavily against me, causing a lump to grow in my throat.  
I paw through my memory, trying to find something, anything, I know about Johanna, something that can help her. Something clicks in the back of my mind and I begin to pace, waiting for Boggs to appear.  
He comes out of Command a few minutes later. He's my commander now, so I suppose he's the person I'd ask for favours. I explain what I want to do and he writes me a note, excusing me from Reflection.

* * *

I head up to our compartment, thinking to use the parachute but it's too full of ugly memories. Instead I cross over the hall and take a bandage from the box of things rescued from twelve. It's strong, sturdy, perfect for what I'm going to use it for.  
I'm stripping pine needles from a branch, unsure of exactly why my hands are shaking, when a conversation Finnick and I had crashed through the fog in my mind, causing me to pull up short.

"_Did you love Annie right away, Finnick" I ask. "No." A long time passes before he adds. "She crept up on me."_

I back up, hitting another tree and sliding down. The ground is damp but I pay it no mind, slumping against the tree trunk.  
She snuck up on me.  
The guilt, the awful feeling in my gut like I've swallowed a lump a lead, I didn't even realise. It's so obvious now.

She's been there, through the nightmares, comforting me. The first time I woke, after we'd moved in together, she'd hovered, unsure. Gentle hands brushed against my arm, hushed voice telling me I was safe.  
Last night, when I'd woken, she hadn't hesitated, slipping into bed next to me, thin arm wrapping softly around my waist. She'd murmured about nothing until my heart rate slowed, kept me close while until I fell back to sleep, comforted by the steady rise and fall of her chest.  
It took me a while to realise that it was helping her as much as it helped me, that she had her own demons waiting in the night. I didn't miss the way her body trembled beside me, shaking off the vestiges of her own dreams.  
She was back in her own bed in the morning, as usual, and we never spoke of it. We never do.  
The attitude, the ferocity, it all dropped then, in the dark of our bedroom. It was back when we woke, of course, and I was back to being brainless.  
It's not just during the night that she's been there. When we're together, I don't think about Gale, or Peeta, or even the impending call to arms.  
Not that I'm thinking about Johanna, it's more like it's just quiet, peaceful. She's like a calm point in a storm, anchoring me, keeping me sane.  
I wonder if she knows, if she ever thought it when she slid her arms around me, keeping the night out. I suddenly find myself wondering more about her. What her favourite colour is, what she was like as a child, if she's ever been in love.

I stand up, brushing myself off and wrapping the pine needles tightly in the bandages, securing them with a vine from a nearby plant. I sniff the bundle, smiling when the smell of the pine needle seeps through.

* * *

My feet drag when I reach the outside of the hospital. I'm suddenly nervous as I stop outside her door. I'm not quite sure because it's not as if she knows about my recent epiphany. I watch her through the door as she struggles to stay awake. She looks so small, eyes wide as she fights the sedation. Nothing like the Johanna I met in the elevator, something that feels like a distant memory now. I know she's fighting sleep because she's scared of what it will bring.  
I cross over to her bed and unsure of what to say, hold out the bundle.  
"What's that?" Her voice is hoarse. She's been screaming.  
"I made it for you." I explain as she takes it, her hands trembling. "Something to put in your drawer." She turns it over in her hands, viewing it. "Smell it."  
She lifts it cautiously to her nose, takes a tentative sniff. "It smells like home." Tears flood her eyes.  
"That's what I was hoping, you being from Seven and all." I smile softly. "Remember when we met? You were a tree. Well, briefly."  
She grins lopsidedly, looking more like her old self for a moment before her face contorts. She grabs my wrist. "Don't go."  
"I have to, I have to get Snow." I frown, resist the urge to tell her I'll stay. "Don't worry."  
"You have to stay safe." Her grip tightens. "And kill the bastard." She grins in an unsettling manor. "You have to kill him, Katniss."  
"I will."  
"Swear it." She sounds desperate. "On something you care about."  
"I swear. On my life." She doesn't let go.  
"On your family's life."  
"On my family's life." Her grip tightens but she doesn't let go. "Why'd you think I'm going, brainless?"  
She smiles a little. "I just needed to hear it, you're all I've got." She mumbles the last part but I hear it anyway. My chest tighten. I move to leave, to let her sleep, but she pulls me back, still holding my wrist. "Stay?" Tears pool in her eyes again. "Please?"  
I move to take a seat in the chair next to her bed but she stops me, shuffling over and motioning to the space she leaves in the bed. I climb up, settling down next to her as she curls up into my side. She presses the pine bundle to her nose and closes her eyes.  
"Always."

* * *

**YO YO YO  
Hello! These are gonna be little snippets of a stupid headcanon and they're not gonna be put up in any order what-so-ever and they'll only go up when I've got time to write them so if I disappoint you I am sorry.  
I have been a big Joniss shipper since I read Catching Fire forever ago but I've been too lazy to ever write anything.  
I hope you enjoyed this though, dear reader! And if you did enjoy it, a review or a favourite/follow would be greatly appreciated.**

**PS! The title of this story is from the song M4 Part II by Faunts and you should listen to that.**


	2. Arena

"What did she mean? She got them for me?" I watch Finnick repeatedly dunk Johanna into the water, causing the water around them to turn red. She's still hurling obscenities at me when her head surfaces above the water. My fingers twitch, half reaching for my bow, tempted to shoot her, and half reaching for my face, shocked that she slapped me seconds earlier.  
The skin of my cheek burns dully.  
"I don't know. You did want them originally." Peeta tells me, watching as Finnick stops dunking her, laughing. She still looks furious but the corners of her mouth turn up slightly at Finnicks' laughter.  
"Yeah, I did. Originally." It still doesn't explain how she knew. Or why she would even want to help me, do something that I would want. Johanna hates me, she's made it painfully obvious since we first met in the elevator of the Training Centre.  
I shake my head, trying to rid myself of the questions I can't answer and look down at Beetee, who's slumped on the ground. "I won't have them for long if we don't do something."  
I busy myself with tending to Beetee, who's taken a knife to the back at some point between now and the start of the game. I help get the caked on blood washed from his skin and clothes, and clean out his wounds, then make him a bandage with some moss and vines from the edge of the forest.  
Once I've helped Wiress clean the blood from her skin and rinsed out her clothes, Johanna and Finnick have joined us.  
Johanna doesn't talk much, gulping down fresh water and stuffing herself with shellfish while Finnick talks about what happened to us prior to our meeting on the beach, his voice sounds detached, and he skips over the part of the story where Mags wandered away from us, off into the fog.  
I try to get Wiress to eat something but she doesn't want to eat, mumbling "tick tock" every now and again.

When night starts to fall, everyone offers to guard our little camp, but in the end Johanna and I get the first watch.  
We don't speak for a long time, content to sit in silence, watching the waves roll up against the shore. I'm not even sure what I'd say to her. Part of me supposes I should thank for, for getting Beetee and Wiress out for me, but I still don't understand her motive.

"How'd you lose Mags?" I watch her eyes travel over to our companions, checking if they're really asleep, then her eyes flit up to me. I've never really looked at her before, always distracted by her anger or her lack of clothes, but in the twilight her eyes sparkle. They're the warmest deep brown I've ever seen, and they'd be almost friendly if her demeanour didn't scream that she'd quite happily join in with the careers and chop me up into pieces small enough for Buttercup to eat.  
"In the fog. Finnick had Peeta. I had Mags for a while, then I couldn't lift her. Finnick said he couldn't take them both. She kissed him and walked right into the poison." I tell her, trying to swallow down the growing lump in my throat at the thought of losing Mags.  
"She was Finnicks mentor, you know." Johanna tells me accusingly, her eyes narrowing.  
"No, I didn't."  
"She was half his family." She tells me after a few moments, but the fights gone out of her words.  
I watch the water lap up over the clothes we've left to soak in the water. I have to ask her. "So, what were you doing with Nuts and Volts?" I hate myself for using that nickname but part of me is trying to relate to her, although I don't know why. I don't know much of anything when it comes to Johanna.  
"I told you." She sighs, eyes flitting toward me briefly then up at the clear sky. "I got them for you. Haymitch said if we were to be allies, I had to bring them to you." She pauses, wrapping her arms around her knees and bringing them up towards her chest. "That's what you told him, right?"  
Haymitch again, always meddling. I don't even know why he thought that Johanna would be helpful. I don't know why she wants to be allies. Is it because Finnicks here? Did she think that I wouldn't let her stay with us without a peace offering?  
"Thanks, I appreciate it." It sounds forced, and I can't help but frown slightly. She's going to think that I hate her. Why do I even care? It's not like she likes me. I tell myself that it's a girl thing, that I've spent so much of my life around boys that I don't understand how to be friends with girls.  
"I hope so." She distracts me from my confusing train of thought, and when I glance up at her she's looking at me weirdly. Mostly, she just looks annoyed by me, but there's something there, underneath it. I can't quite put my finger on what it is.  
Before I have any time to figure it out "tick tock" comes from behind me and I turn to find Wiress has crawled over to us.  
"Oh goody, she's back." Johanna says, but she's still looking at me funnily. It almost looks like concern but I quickly push that thought away. "Okay, I'm going to sleep, you and Nuts can guard together."  
She gets up and practically flounces over to where the others lie, throwing herself down into the sand but not before throwing one last look toward me.  
I don't think I'll ever understand Johanna Mason.

* * *

**yoooo, these are obviously in no order what so ever, i think i already said that but who really wants to check what they've written before**

**i've been trying to write an essay but i can't concentrate and one of my housemates is screaming at his xbox like a fucknig dick, and the other one is outside my window talking and her voice is fucking annoying as shit i hate living with 10 people sometimes. **

**anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I've decided that once I've finished with these things I'm gonna rearrange them into some kind of order, and yeah. If you wanted to review or give me a favourite/follow, that would also be awesome.  
ok, ilu, bye.**


	3. First Night

"Sorry." Johanna slides the drawer containing the few items I've collected from the Arena and my last trip to District 12 closed. It's not much, I know, but I think of Johanna's drawer, and how it's devoid of anything personal, anything from her home. She's been poking around the room for a while now, inspecting the room.  
"It's okay, you can look if you want." She slides the drawer open again, picking up the closest item. It's the locket containing pictures of Gale, my mother and Prim. She studies each picture briefly before closing the locket and placing it down. She moves on to the parachute, gently opening it and taking out the spile. She slips it over her pinky. "Makes me thirsty just looking at it." She half-smiles before she puts it back, picking up the pearl Peeta gave me in the Arena. "Is this…?" She doesn't look at me, turning the pearl over in her hands.  
"Yeah." I say, frowning. "Made it through somehow." I don't want to talk about Peeta. I never do, but something about talking to Johanna about him makes me feel worse. Uneasy. Maybe it's because they were together in the Capitol, that she's suffered just as much as he has, knows more about what he's been through than I'll ever be able to understand. Training's been keeping my mind occupied, stopping my mind from wandering.  
"Haymitch says he's getting better."  
"Maybe." I sigh, sitting up and wrapping my arms around my knees. "But he's changed."  
"So have you." She pauses for a minute, letting the pearl sit in the palm of her hand. "So have I. And Finnick and Haymitch and Beetee. Don't get me started on Annie Cresta. The arena messed us all up pretty good, don't you think?" She sort of half laughs at the question. "Or do you still feel like the girl who volunteered for her sister?"  
"No." I admit.  
"That's the one thing I think my head doctor might be right about. There's no going back. So we might as well get on with things." She places the pear back into the parachute, neatly folding it back up and crosses the room, climbing into the bed next to mine just as the lights go out. "You're not afraid I'll kill you tonight?"  
"Like I couldn't take you." I shoot back. We laugh, mostly because our bodies are both so wrecked it'll be a miracle if we can get up tomorrow.  
"Night, brainless."

When I was in the hospital, my nightmares were less frequent, less intense. Maybe because of the morphling lingering in my system, or the fact the lights stayed on constantly so the doctors could keep an eye on us. Either way, they tended to be mild.  
Not like tonight.  
I'm back in the arena, and we're running. I don't know what from at first, until I see the eyes around us, glinting in the darkness. The mutts from the end of my first games surround us, fallen tributes eyes peering out through the thick forest around us.  
Wiress is the first to be picked off, the mutt with Glimmers eyes pulling her down, snapping her neck with its strong jaws.  
One by one, the victors are picked off, each death more gruesome than the last, until a mutt with Rues innocent eyes pulls Johanna down, tearing at her limbs. I stop, spinning around and pulling my bow from my back, but every single arrow I fire misses, disappearing through the trees. Johanna struggles the entire time, trying to free herself from the mutts grip as sharp teeth tear through her skin.  
The last arrow I fire grazes the Rue-mutt's ear as it tears out Johanna's throat. It looks up at me, muzzle covered Johannas blood, mouth pulling into a sick grin as Rue's eyes still look on innocently.  
It lunges forward, and I lift up my arm to block it, a scream growing in my throat.

"Katniss." I shoot up, gasping. Johanna hovers next to me, arm reaching out awkwardly. "Katniss?" I look at her, chest heaving as I try and catch my breath. Her eyes are wide as she reaches forward, resting a hand on my arm. "Are you okay?"  
"I…" My eyes run over her quickly, worry from my dream left over. "Bad dream, did I wake you?"  
"I don't sleep very well anyway." She tells me, hand rubbing my arm softly.  
"Sorry." I mumble anyway. "You should get some sleep."  
She nods, patting my arm one more time before standing up. I roll over, pulling my cover up to my shoulders.  
Johanna shuffles around behind me before she sighs. I think she's gone back to her side of the room until I feel the bed dip beside me.  
"What are you doing?" I ask her, turning to look at her.  
"I'm going for walk…" She smirks at me. "What does it look like I'm doing? Move over, brainless."  
I furrow my brow but move, allowing her to lie down beside me.  
"Go to sleep." She shuffles down under the covers, closing her eyes and ignoring that I'm still staring at her. "Seriously, we've got training in the morning ."  
I roll my eyes but lie back down, facing away from her. I take a few deep breaths, trying to steady my still pounding heart. I try and distract myself from the lingering memory of the dream, so I concentrate on Johanna's steady breathing.  
I jump slightly when I feel a thin arm wrap around my waist but then Johanna is closer, breath brushing across my neck, and I can feel the rise and fall of her chest against my back. Somewhere in the back of my mind I register that she's still too thin but I'm suddenly too tired to think about anything but sleeping.  
"Johanna?" I mumble.  
She makes some noise of acknowledgement, half asleep.  
"Thanks."  
"S'okay." She tightens her arm around my waist, and my eyes slip closed.  
For the first time since I've reached District 13, I don't dream.

* * *

**I know this is super short, and I apologise, and the stuff I've got cookin' will be so much better, I promise. I just didn't want you to think that I had forgotten this fic. I am hoping I'll have some sort of christmas-y deal up on christmas eve/christmas day, and it will be long, and better than this. **  
**Any parts of the books/post book stuff you wanna see? Let me know! Totes open to suggestions. **  
**Also, I hope you've enjoyed this, and it'd be dead cool if you left a review. OKAY BYE. **

**(ps, happy holidays to you all!)  
(pps, my mum is super christmas drunk)**


	4. Snowfall

It's still dark when I wake up, moonlight shining through the gap in the curtains. I roll over, reaching out across the bed only to find the space beside me empty, sheets cool where they've been thrown back haphazardly.  
"Jo?" Usually it's so hard to get her out of bed in the morning that it's kind of a shock to find the bed empty.  
Where ever she is, she doesn't reply. "Jo?" I try again, a little louder and I'm again greeted with silence.  
I sit up slowly, looking around the bedroom we've shared since she arrived in District 12 during the summer. When she first turned up, stepping off a supply train from District 13 with some of the survivors of the fire-bombing, she'd settled herself in one of the many spare rooms my house in the Victors Village, but her sleeping in a different room lasted about 3 days. To be honest, I thought that I'd break first, crawl into her bed in the dead of night like we used to back in District 13.  
The night I'd woken up to her pressing her cold feet against the back of my legs, I couldn't even find it in me to be annoyed, I was just happy I wasn't sleeping alone.  
Buttercup lies at the bottom of the bed, face turned away in disinterest. I still don't like him much, and he still hisses at me on occasion, but he's all I've got left of Prim.  
I think he knows it too, because there hasn't been a night since I returned and found him here that I've woken up without him by my side. He's still ugly as hell, and coats everything in his horrendous yellow fur, but he's family.  
I slide my feet over the side of the bed, shivering when they make contact with cold wooden floor of our bedroom.  
When I first came back to District 12, after the Capitol, and Prim, I barely left the living room, the house full of memories made it too painful to live comfortably. Even now, as I walk through the door of my room, heading toward the bathroom, the walls whisper, reminding me of my sister, of the silence that's replaced her, but it's easier to bare now. The memories are almost comforting.

"Johanna?" I open the bathroom door, flicking the light on. Empty. I hear Buttercup pad down the hallway behind me, probably heading towards his food bowl, waiting for me to feed him. My brow furrows in confusion, wondering where she possibly could've gotten to at this time.  
The sun's making an appearance now, the cool blue light of the moon giving way to the warming glow of sunrise as I make my way down the stairs. Buttercup, who has stopped to make sure I've followed him, shoots off in the direction of the kitchen as I reach the bottom of the stairs.  
The living room and study are both empty, so I wander through to the kitchen, to be greeted with the sight of a wide open door.  
It's been open long enough that the snow that must've started falling at some point during the night has coated the floor where it's been able to reach, leaving an undisturbed white layer.  
Buttercup mews from beside his food bowl as I open the pantry door, retrieving my fathers' old hunting jacket from the peg it sits on.  
"Not now." I tell him as I slip my arms into the worn leather, sliding my shoes into my favourite boots. Buttercup hisses at me, a familiar sound when I refuse to feed him, then shoots out of the back door, disturbing the layer of snow that sits there. I sigh, sliding the door to the pantry closed and following him out into the snow, not bothering to close the door behind me.  
Despite the fresh layer of snow, it's pretty easy to follow the footprints that head out towards the meadow. Another smaller set of footprints heads off in the other direction, where Buttercup is no doubt meowing at Greasy Sae's door, knowing she's a ready source of food.  
I walk through the wall of trees, looking back toward the village where windows have been illuminated by people waking for a new day. I'll admit, I like the village a lot more now that there are more people living here, the hustle and bustle of people coming and going all day, voices floating in from my neighbours making the place feel almost normal.  
When I break through trees, it's easy to see Johanna. She's perched on a fallen tree toward one side of the meadow, one of my older jackets she'd adopted for the colder weather pulled tightly around her. She doesn't look up when I approach her, and when I get closer,

I sit down next to her silently, looking her over. There are snowflakes sticking to her eyelashes, and I'm tempted to reach out and wipe them off but I refrain, instead following her line of sight. She's watching a fox weave through the undergrowth on the other side of the meadow, probably looking for something to eat.  
"I've never seen snow fall before." Johanna tells me after a few moments of silence. "I've heard about it, seen it coating the floor on my Victory tour, but never like this." She looks up, blinking when new snowflakes rest around her eyes. "It doesn't snow in District 7. I never really questioned why, but when I was young, my Grandmother used to tell us that it was the Capitol, controlling the weather." She laughs. "I think it's more to do with geography, but we never used to argue with her." I smile slightly. I like hearing about Johanna's family, she doesn't talk about them often, the same way I don't talk about Prim anymore. "It used to rain during winter, it'd fall in sheets, last for days at a time. My dad would come home from work soaked through to the bone, then fall asleep in front of the fire." She smiles softly.  
I reach out, thread my fingers through hers. "You're freezing."  
"Yeah." She tightens her grip on my hand.  
"You wanna go back?" I look at her as she shakes her head, scattering snow around us.  
"Not yet." She sighs. "Can we just sit here for a while?" She scoots across the tree trunk, pressing against my side. "It's nice."  
Nice is high praise from Johanna, so I agree, nodding my head then resting it on her shoulder.

We sit in silence, hands linked, until Buttercup makes an appearance, mewing to get our attention.  
"Go away." Johanna kicks snow in his direction, causing him to turn his gaze to her. He doesn't move though, just meows again.  
"We'd better head back before he attacks and eats us." I grin, pressing my nose against her cold cheek. She smiles a little and nods, letting me pull her up from the log. When she stands, I start to walk in toward the house but she pulls me back, spinning me to face her and pressing her lips against mine.  
"I could get used to this…" She kisses me again. "Kissing you in the snow."  
As if to complain about the pause in our movement, Buttercup yowls again to get our attention. I press my forehead against hers, closing my eyes briefly.  
"I love you." I whisper.  
She shifts, kissing my forehead then tugging my hand, pulling me in the direction of the house. She looks back, smirks at my bemused expression.  
"I love you too."

* * *

**yo yo yo waddup. I hope you've all had a nice christmas, and if you don't celebrate christmas then I hope you had a nice day anyway!  
I didn't really wanna write something christmas-y because I don't know if I feel like christmas would be something that they celebrate in Panem, but I could be wrong so I just did this. ****This is pretty short but I've got a shit tonne of uni work to do and it's driving me insane. And I'm sleeping on a camp bed )': **  
I hope you enjoy it! And if you would be so kind as to leave a favourite, or a review, that would be supercool! Also, if you're a return reader, you are super cool for sticking with me through this. Hopefully I will have a new year chapter up at the new year. Either nyd or the 30th. We'll see. OK BYE. 


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